Florida's Scott denies muzzling global warming talk

Florida Gov. Rick Scott on Monday denied an investigative report that his environmental protection agency muzzled workers from talking about global warming – but he also made clear that he didn’t want to talk about the issue at all.

The controversy erupted Sunday after the nonprofit Florida Center for Investigative Reporting published an account quoting former Florida Department of Environmental Protection staffers who said agency leaders under Scott pressured them to not mention “global warming,” “climate change” or “sea level rise.”

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The report sent shockwaves through Florida’s environmental community, disappointed some fellow Republicans in South Florida and led climate scientists to bemoan the “Orwellian” political environment in the state, a low-lying peninsula that’s acutely threatened by rising seas.

“Let’s look at what we’ve accomplished: We’ve had significant investments in beach re-nourishment, with flood mitigation,” Scott said as he changed the subject to other environmental projects, a talking point from his 2014 reelection campaign.

Scott wouldn’t say if the agency plans for or believes in global warming, but said he’s a problem-solver. Asked if he thought global warming was a problem, Scott refused to say.

When he first ran for office in 2010, Scott said “I have not been convinced” about man-made causes of global warming. He said he needed “something more convincing than what I’ve read” to change his mind. The first-term GOP governor stopped talking about global warming during his reelection campaign against Democrat Charlie Crist, who was aided by a nearly $18 million effort from billionaire investor-turned-climate-change activist Tom Steyer’s NextGen Climate Action Florida group.

“I’m not a scientist,” Scott, echoing other Republicans, repeatedly said in 2014 when asked about climate change.

Regardless of whether an overt gag order was issued or not, the state’s attitude about the seriousness of global warming changed under Scott. The year before he was elected, the Florida Oceans and Coastal Council’s Annual Research Plan referenced climate change 15 times and had a section labelled “Climate Change.” Last year, however, the plan had only one mention of “climate change” that “must have slipped by the censors,” sources told the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting.

The allegations of politically motivated changes at the state level recall a national 2010 report from the Union of Concerned Scientists that rapped former President George W. Bush’s administration for “widespread political interference in the work of federal climate scientists, edits to official scientific documents and a general attempt to foster uncertainty about robust scientific conclusions.”

Christopher Byrd, one of the former DEP lawyers who said the agency muzzled staff about climate change and global warming, says he was surprised by the amount of attention the new report generated.

“No one should be shocked by this because this is Rick Scott we’re talking about,” Byrd told POLITICO. Byrd, who said he was ultimately fired from DEP because he “didn’t fit the direction” of the agency, said a deputy general counsel told agency lawyers that “Global warming, climate change…. Those words are no longer to be used in the office if you know what’s good for you.”

Byrd and other former DEP staffers gave similar accounts to the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting, where one said that she was told “sea level rise” should be called “nuisance flooding.”

The DEP and governor’s office deny this was a policy put forth by Scott or the administration.

The state’s position on global warming has particular salience in low-lying, heavily populated South Florida, where county governments have started discussing the issue and are planning to grapple with rising seas due to climate change.

“Miami-Dade County has been talking about this seriously since 2006. So that’s a close decade,” said Raquel Regalado, a Republican county school member who plans to run for county mayor. “We have an action plan and partnered with Palm Beach, Broward and Monroe counties – so the idea that the state at some level is censoring and that somehow this goes away is absurd.”

Until this report, climate change as a political issue had effectively gone away for Scott after the 2014 elections. Leading up to the race, a group of climate scientists and professors repeatedly petitioned the governor to meet with him and explain the science behind climate change.

David Hastings, a professor of Marine Science & Chemistry at Eckerd College in Florida, and others finally met with the governor. But Scott took up nearly half of the time on small talk and didn’t seem to listen to what he was told, they said.

Hastings said the new report about DEP and climate change “lit up my social media. It’s incredible. My first thought this was out of the Onion, a satirical website…. It’s very Orwellian, a totalitarian or authoritarian practice. It’s out of ‘1984.’ We’re the state most impacted by climate change. If we can’t even say that word, where are we regarding policy? We’re completely adrift.”

Scott wouldn’t discuss climate change policy at all with reporters on Monday as he changed the focus to discuss Everglades restoration projects, the settling of an Everglades restoration lawsuit, beach re-nourishment programs and initiatives to protect Florida’s freshwater springs.

“What we’re doing is we’re solving problems,” Scott said, a variant of a line he said three times.

A reporter asked if global warming is a problem.

“Here’s what we’re dealing with: We’re dealing with the problems of Florida,” Scott replied. “We’re dealing with beach re-nourishment, flood mitigation, dealing with making sure we push water south [through the Everglades], we have the right storage things for the Everglades. We’re dealing with all these things.”

Asked again about whether his agency muzzled workers, Scott again denied it.

“No. That’s not true,” he said. “As you know, I’m focused on solutions.”